In perhaps the most exciting display of obstetrical performance art since Karen Finley birthed a yam back in the early '80s, Brooklyn-based artist Marni Kotak is letting a gallery audience observe the delivery of her first child.

The work, entitled "The Birth of Baby X," will turn the Microscope Gallery in Bushwick into a public birthing room, where the artist will stay until the baby arrives, some time in the next five weeks. If you happen to be there for the big moment, well — you're in for a messy treat!

"I hope that people will see that human life itself is the most profound work of art, and that therefore giving birth, the greatest expression of life, is the highest form of art," she said.

"I have decided to do this because I want to show people that, as in my previous performances, real life is the best performance art."

How nice for those people! But what about the kid? Their first conscious perception of the world will be that of a dozen or so hipsters and art cognoscenti's contorted faces, all of them holding forth smart phones as if they'd just witnessed the emergence of a tiny, alien being from an open U.F.O. hatch.